CONFLUENCE OF THE TIMES: RICHARD SUDELL (1892-1968), THE FORGOTTEN MAN OF EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY GARDEN AND LANDSCAPE HISTORY

摘要

Earlier this year, the planning committee of Westminster City Council rejected a scheme for a major redevelopment of the large apartment complex at Dolphin Square in Pimlico, London, citing, as one reason, the need to preserve the historically important courtyard garden at its heart. Campaigners seeking to halt the redevelopment had succeeded in earlier persuading Historic England to register the garden as a Grade II landscape of significant interest. The garden is the last wholly intact example of the work of Richard Sudell (1892-1968), an early twentieth-century suburban garden pioneer, founder member of the Institute of Landscape Architects (ILA), and a man largely forgotten to garden and landscape history, his almost evangelical role in inspiring a newly situated working class to embrace open space neglected. Yet, a study of his life and times brings rich reward for the garden historian seeking grassroots' evidence of how the tumultuous social and political upheavals arising from the two worldwars manifested themselves in a new battle for definitions of landscape.